ForcesWatch develops projects and works with organisations, individuals and initiatives concerned about military recruitment in the UK. Their work include challenging military presence in education, campaigning for raising the minimum age of recruitment to 18, making terms and conditions for serving personnel clearer and less restrictive, as well as campaigning for greater recognition of conscientious objection.

The youth wing of the Scottish National Party (SNP) secured a landmark victory at the party's annual conference on Sunday (8 October) as members voted in favour of raising the army recruitment age from 16 to 18.

SNP Youth have long-campaigned for the Ministry of Defence to ban the enlistment of 16- and 17-year-olds into the armed forces and yesterday a majority of party members agreed as the motion passed with a significant majority.

Rhiannon Spear, Glasgow councillor and SNP Youth national convenor, told the conference: “This is about what society that we want to be, it is about how we value our young people. We believe that the interests and health of Scotland’s young people must come before the demands of British military recruiters.”

The passing of the motion, which was publicly backed by 17 MSPs, one MP and 12 local branches before Sunday's debate, means that the SNP as a whole will now actively push for an increase in recruitment age.

Veterans for Peace UK has released a new report exploring the effects of army employment on recruits, particularly during initial training. The report, drawing on veterans’ testimony and around 200 studies, finds that the risk of violent offending and heavy drinking rises after joining the army.

Dan joined the army in 2006, at 18, having grown up in an area of high unemployment. He was told that military discipline would keep him out of trouble. After training he deployed to Iraq, and when he came home he assaulted a warrant officer. He was sentenced to 18 months in military prison.

Today, on Saturday, June 24th, Liverpool is hosting Armed Forces Day in Britain. Armed Forces Day is a relatively new occasion in the UK; it began as Veterans’ Day, in 2006, and was then renamed Armed Forces Day in 2009 in response to declining public support for the armed forces. Events take place across the UK (this year there are over 350), and local councils bid to host the national event – for which they receive a small amount of government funding and sponsorship, and also spend significant amounts of their own money.

The arms and fossil fuels industries are putting a lot of resources into science and engineering educational material for British school children. We should be very concerned, argues Philip Wood, SGR.

In 2007 the head of the Army’s recruitment strategy stated, “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air show and thinking, ‘That looks great.’ From then the Army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip.” Industries, crucially the arms and fossil fuels industries, are attempting to do exactly the same thing. They are using the notion of a skills shortage in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to provide STEM ‘enrichment activities’ as a way of getting in front of and influencing a captive audience of impressionable children.

Rifles and submachine guns assembled in the UK could be exported for use in conflicts involving child soldiers, according to a report by European children’s charities.

The report accuses Heckler & Koch (H&K) – a German company that is among the world’s largest producers of small arms – of sidestepping obstacles to exports at home by using its subsidiary in the UK, where a “lack of transparency” has frustrated attempts to scrutinise arms deals.

Army training is ‘traumatic’ for young recruits and damages the adolescent mind, according to British infantry veteran Wayne Sharrocks, who features in a series of short films released this week by Child Soldiers International. The films offer young people and their parents a frank alternative to army recruitment materials which, say many veterans, present a sanitised and unrealistic impression of military life. In particular, Wayne Sharrocks wants young people to know that the psychological effects of training can be harmful and permanent.

Since the late 2000s, successive British governments have put considerable resources into promoting greater recognition and support for the UK Armed Forces. The targeting of children has been integral to this. From the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) recommendation that its ‘Armed Forces Days’ take place on Saturdays so that school children can more easily attend, to military provision of activities for classrooms, enhancing positive associations with the military, specifically among children, has been an aim from the outset.

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Sowing Seeds

Through articles, images, survey data and interviews, Sowing Seeds: The Militarisation of Youth and How to Counter It documents the seeds of war that are planted in the minds of young people in many different countries. However, it also explores the seeds of resistance to this militarisation that are being sown resiliently and creatively by numerous people. READ MORE